Among the ancient Greeks the Cretans were remarkable for saying not [Greek: patris] (father-land), but [Greek: maetris] (mother-land), by which name also the Messenians called their native land. Some light upon the loss of "mother-words" in ancient Greece may be shed from the legend which tells that when the question came whether the new town was to be named after Athene or Poseidon, all the women voted for the former, carrying the day by a single vote, whereupon Poseidon, in anger, sent a flood, and the men, determining to punish their wives, deprived them of the power of voting, and decided that thereafter children were not to be named after their mothers (115. 235).
In Gothic, we meet with a curious term for "native land, home," gabaurths (from gabairan "to bear"), which signifies also "birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase "all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history of our own English tongue erd (cognate with our earth) signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and uncivilized peoples in which earth, land are "native country," for these are, in the true sense of the term, Landesleute, homines.
In the language of the Hervey Islands, in the South Pacific, "the place in which the placenta of an infant is buried is called the ipukarea, or native soil" (459. 26).
Our English language seems still to prefer "native city, native town, native village," as well as "native land," "mother-city" usually signifying an older town from which younger ones have come forth. In German, though Vaterstadt in analogy with Vaterland seems to be the favorite, Mutterstadt is not unknown.
Besides Mutterland and Mutterstadt, we find in German the following:—
Mutterboden, "mother-land." Used by the poet Uhland. Muttergefilde, "the fields of mother-earth." Used by Schlegel. Muttergrund, "the earth," as productive of all things. Used by Goethe. Mutterhimmel, "the sky above one's native land." Used by the poet Herder. Mutterluft, "the air of one's native land." Mutterhaus, "the source, origin of anything." Uhland even has:—
"Hier ist des Stromes Mutterhaus,
Ich trink ihn frisch vom Stein heraus."
More far-reaching, diviner than "mother-land," is "mother-earth."
CHAPTER III.
THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued).